Your Life Is Mine: A Novel

By Nathan Ripley

Instant national bestseller Nathan Ripley follows up the success of Find You in the Dark with another suspenseful page-turner—this time about a woman whose notorious father died when she was a child, but whose legacy comes back to haunt her.

Blanche Potter never expected to face her past again—but she can’t escape it.

Blanche, an up-and-coming filmmaker, has distanced herself in every way she can from her father, the notorious killer and cult leader, Chuck Varner. In 1996, when she was a small child, he went on a shooting spree before turning the gun on himself.

Now, Blanche learns that her mother has been murdered. She returns to her childhood home, where she soon discovers there’s more to the death than police are willing to reveal. The officer who’s handling the case is holding information back, and a journalist who’s nosing around the investigation is taking an unusual interest in Blanche’s family.

Blanche begins to suspect that Chuck Varner’s cult has found a new life, and that her mother’s murder was just the beginning of the cult’s next chapter.

Then another killing occurs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781501178252

Nathan Ripley

Nathan Ripley is the pseudonym of Toronto resident and Journey Prize winner Naben Ruthnum. Find You in the Dark, Ripley’s first thriller, was an instant bestseller and an Arthur Ellis Awards finalist for Best First Novel. As Naben Ruthnum, he is the author of Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race. Follow him on Twitter @NabenRuthnum.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

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I STOOD OUTSIDE THE cinema, watching the crowd in the lobby, trying to get rid of what I’d just seen. One, then another of them, falling as they held their sides, screaming as the red started to show. Nothing like that was happening, of course. Everyone was just fine: I could see them moving, speaking. Just a crowd of people, New Orleans natives and our Los Angeles production and network team, drinking, having fun. Alive. But crowds still did this to me, twenty years after Chuck Varner let go of my hand. I saw the people falling, heard them dying.

I still didn’t quite believe it, but I was standing outside a cinema where people had just watched, cried, and clapped over what I’d made. We’d only wrapped three months before. Editing-as-we-went had resulted in a rough cut that looked so good the producers demanded we leave it untouched for a slapped-together New Orleans premiere, this miniature gala event they’d flown in key industry and press to attend. As always, it was after postproduction when all the money they’d been telling us didn’t exist happened to turn up.

No one here knows who you really are, said a voice behind me. Just me.

I pretended I wasn’t entirely keyed up with fear and turned, smiling, tapping an inch of ash off the cigarette I’d almost forgotten was in my mouth. I’d dropped some, not much, onto the green bib blouse that Jaya had made me wear to the premiere to distract from my pilling but thankfully stretch-waisted black skirt.

Sorry to sneak up on you, the man said. He was late twenties, like me, but built like he’d grown up with a lot more nutrition. A couple inches taller than most of the people in the lobby behind the glass, especially the crew that I’d used to shoot The Marigny Five, this historical true crime doc that was the closest I’d come, so far, to selling out. It was easy for someone to look tall compared to my crew: I liked using small men and women when I shot, a little team dressed in black who eventually vanished to the people I was talking to, began to seem like shadows in the rooms and homes where we filmed subjects telling us more than they wanted to.

I think I can comfortably say that everyone in there knows who I am, I said. I made the movie they just watched and stood up there while they asked stupid questions. He laughed, which wasn’t the response I was going for. I was good at stepping on fear before it started, and I did it here again. The lobby was full of living people, with no threat in sight. And this was just a man trying his boring best to talk to me. Then he tried it again.

I know, I was in there. But I mean I know who you really, really are. It wasn’t the persistence that made my instincts flick on again—it was his smile. His anticipation. Like he actually had something to say to me, and I wouldn’t want to hear it.

I turned away from him with an upward nod that I tried to make dismissive, but not a provocation.

Whatever you say. See you inside, maybe, I said.

Jaya was by the food table, methodically working her way through a heap of green beans that was difficult to eat with the plastic spoons left over after the prescreening run on forks. Producing involved so much talking on the phone and in-person that she tended to shut down as soon as she could, leaving her quiet on premiere nights, changing her from the person who always did the approaching into someone who needed to be approached. This was the first premiere we’d done outside of New York or Los Angeles, not counting underattended screenings at whatever little festival would accept our weird docs and that we could afford to fly to.

Jaya had found this beautiful old cinema, the Carver, which was next to the fried chicken mecca that me and the rest of the crew had been hitting twice a week for the four months of production, eating enough bird that we had the production company do an all-seafood spread for this screening.

You still glad we did this? I asked Jaya.

Of course I am. Did you see Programming Bruce’s face? He thinks you’re Errol Morris with sharper cheekbones and built-in commercial instincts. When you were doing your intro he was texting every press contact he has to set up on cameras with you.

How do you know who he was texting?

I sat over his right shoulder so I could spy. Don’t worry, I got him to turn his goddamn phone off before the lights went down.

Yeah, I said. Jaya zeroed in on the ash stain over my left breast, pointing, and I shrugged. I’d smeared it in when I tried to brush it off. The blouse had already lost most of its structure from being subjected to the tonguing blast of humidity in my brief time outside, so the mark was no tragedy. Still, I worked on angling my bag strap to overlay the mark.

Before I could point out the guy across the room and ask Jaya to talk me out of my unease, one of the camera assistants we’d used came over and interrupted us. Nice kid, Maurice something. Jaya would know his last name, his parents’ names, probably his social insurance number. He was wearing a T-shirt of so many shades of neon-approaching brilliance that my eyes dropped to the food table to avoid the strain of looking at it. I half-listened to him saying something quick about how great the show had turned out, before he started a hesitant sentence that Jaya interrupted six words in.

You want to work on our next thing? I think we’d all like that. Way lower budget, and it’s about a weirdo eccentric rich writer lady, I’m warning you in advance. Very different.

I just want in on anything y’all do, you know?

I turned up from my strap-fiddling at this, looking Maurice in the eye, which was a good thing, because he was nodding earnestly at me, actually tearing up.

I’ve never made something good before. I love how you respected this city and the people this ghastly shit happened to, Blanche. Jaya, he added.

Thanks, Maurice, I said. Jaya nodded, trying to look solemn, the effect hurt by the spoon she was holding straight up in her other hand, like a magic wand.

Don’t take this wrong, Maurice said, the kind of phrase that usually precedes a shitty statement from a man. But I think you have this real grip on their trauma. What these people went through, victims or family, you just get it.

I think that’s a compliment, I said.

I do, too, Jaya said, looking down in the hope I wouldn’t notice how badly she wanted Maurice and me to keep talking. This was the kind of conversation I would have shut down before it started if it was just between her and me. It was why we worked together, as friends and beyond: we knew what questions not to ask.

I would—I’d love to know how you do it. How you talk to people right, Maurice said. His expectant gaze and the fact that he’d worked insane overtime got me to give up a little bit.

I treat them like they’re more than the thing that happened to them, I said. If you go in asking them how they dealt with this horrible thing, you’ll get—every subject does this—they look at you to see if you already have an answer you’re expecting. Bo Stallins, the brother of Chianna?

Yeah, said Maurice. We shot him outside the dorms.

Everyone who’s asked him how he dealt with his sister being murdered wanted to hear one of two kinds of answers. Either the steps up to enlightenment he took, or the dark path down into addiction or rage or violence. And, because he’s a built black man, most idiot reporters—

They want to hear the drug story, said Maurice. The jail story. And he doesn’t have that.

"Right. Straight arrow, has half a bachelor’s degree, does the janitor job because it’s union and part time, gives him time to write his atheist philosophical horror novels. And even those—those weird books of his, they aren’t just his trauma. They’re his imagination, his life. I get people talking about the whole thing first, their life, then the event that everyone else starts with. Right?"

Maurice nodded, and Jaya looked profoundly pleased with herself. It was clear to anyone who’d seen Marigny Five that it was mature work, despite initially seeming like my sell-out farewell to the difficult films I’d been making with Jaya since school. This was the first piece that didn’t seem at all like an audition. And I hadn’t wanted to do it, this odd, four-episode, doc-movie-show hybrid that had the camera assist in front of me tearing up, that had held the audience tonight in the best possible rapt silence. Jaya had forced me, and she’d been right.

The streaming network that wanted us to make the story of the Marigny killings gave us so much money that, when Jaya broke it down, we had enough beyond living expenses in our two contracts to get a start on the feature doc about Caroline Blackwood, the novelist, Guinness heir, and Lucian Freud divorcer that I’d wanted to do for the last two years.

We have to do it, Jaya told me. This is how weird movies get born. You seed them with money from the normalish things you didn’t want to do. Plus, we can talk these people into distribution money up front for the Blackwood thing if they end up liking the show.

I hate this serial killer crap, I said.

These are killings that have nothing to do with you. Don’t get mad at what I’m about to tell you, okay? she said. This isn’t about Chuck Varner.

It wasn’t okay and I did get mad. I yelled at her in the tiny office room of my apartment before calming down and apologizing, then admitting that she was right, even if she was an absolute bitch to have brought it up. We signed on to do the series the next week.

It’s pronounced ‘Morris,’ Maurice said, but didn’t look that put out. It was getting more crowded around the food table, with audience members and execs alike passing their third drink and needing to lay down some absorbent grease and carbs before they started to slur. Some of the Treme sidewalk traffic had made its way in and toward the open bar, too, and on my and Jaya’s say-so earlier that evening, they were not being effed with by security.

Oh, shit. How’s it spelled?

Uh, M-O-R-R-I-S.

Was I calling you that when we were working? The wrong thing?

Just a couple of times but it was unimportant, you know? I wasn’t going to interrupt you for that.

Next time interrupt the hell out of me, Morris, I said. I’m not big on disrespect on my projects, top-down especially. I’m sorry. And I’m looking forward to the next time. At Jaya’s insistence, Morris loaded up a paper plate.

Who’s the should-be-on-an-Australian-beach guy over there? I asked Jaya, including Morris in my questioning glance. He shrugged. I was surprised I’d had to ask Jaya at all; I’d lived with her and her mom for half of high school and we’d been roommates for way too much of our twenties. She had a sharp sense of whenever I took an interest in a man, whether it was negative or positive. Morris backed into another conversation and Jaya set her plate with its delicious beans and frustrating spoon down. I resisted the urge to do a full visual sweep of the room, to make sure that everyone was all right, unhurt, still alive. Every time I indulged the fear was a setback, and I wouldn’t let myself cave twice in one night.

No idea, she said, looking at the man over my shoulder, then trying to wolf-whistle quietly through the gap in her front teeth. When we were teenagers she’d been able to do it perfectly, either factory-lunch-break loud or quiet enough just to get me and the rest of the kids sitting in back of Mrs. Stuart’s English 11 to laugh when she had Polanski’s Macbeth playing for us in the darkened classroom. But the gap had widened slightly in the past few years, by micrometers, and her tongue hadn’t quite gotten the hang of the new dimensions. What came out in the Carver lobby was a piffle of air and a shred of bean.

Go ask his name, Jaya said. Maybe he’s press, or something.

Maybe he came in for the free AC and oysters.

Also likely. We were both looking at him without bothering to cover it up—he was leaning against a wall near one of the entrances to the screening room itself, doing something with his phone, his eyes sometimes flicking toward me. I’d felt them on my back when I was talking to Jaya and Morris.

He had a weird line, I said.

Like, creepy?

Sort of. Said he knew ‘who I really was,’ I said, twitching my index and middle fingers as quotes.

Jaya laughed. Something he heard between poses in yoga class and thought would work. You don’t think it’s just a line?

I looked at her. Jaya closed her eyes for a second.

You have to stop with this, Blanche. Chuck Varner’s gone, no one thinks about him anymore, and no one you’ll ever meet who matters in your life or in your work will ever connect you to any of this shit. Jaya was used to giving this talk and I was used to hearing it; not just hearing it, but needing it, ever since high school. She never got tired of telling me that Chuck was over for me. I kept trying to tell myself the same thing, but it was much harder to believe when I said it.

It was just a line, Blanche. I do encourage you to be paranoid about any and every man being a scumbag, because it’s not an unsafe bet, but that was just a line. Right?

Yes. Fine, you’re right.

So prove it, Jaya said, resuming her tangle with the beans, this time plucking them individually from the plate and crunching into them like french fries. She was fresh off a breakup with an editor named Cory Lutes, a really nice guy who eventually wanted more from her than half an evening per week. Every few months, Jaya or I pretended that we could have a functional relationship with a man and still have as much time with each other as we needed.

I walked over to the guy, making a stop at the bar for my third Old Grand-Dad bourbon, this one poured as heavy as the last two. When I reached him I plucked the phone out of his hands and looked at it.

Whatcha doin’? I asked. It was dark, on lockscreen. He hadn’t been using it at all.

Research on what I could say to you that wouldn’t drive you away immediately this time. I want to talk to you.

About who I really, really am and what we’re really, really doing here? I said. Programming Bruce and another exec, identically dressed in blue shirts tucked into whatever the upscale take on J. Crew chinos is, were making their way over to me, and I got ready to pivot—but there was no need. Jaya interposed herself and started talking to them, ushering them toward old Mrs. Bucknell, the eldest surviving relative of the Marigny victims. Ada Bucknell was the one who turned out to have been having an affair with the murderer, a brewery owner named Alec Mitchell. She didn’t know who she was fucking, as she put it to us bluntly after an hour and a half of interviewing at her dining table, a looming crucifix and ten picture frames on the wall behind her, eight of which contained images of her dead sister. If I knew the demon he was I’d have cut him open while he slept, she said. Just cut him open and laid there next to him till the blood soaked all through the mattress and washed up around me. When she’d said that, I thought of my father sleeping in the narrow bed in our trailer the night before the Harlow Mall shooting, and the little fixed-blade knife he’d gotten me for my sixth birthday. He’d encouraged me to sleep with it. In its sheath, of course. I thought of my small hands sheathing the knife in Chuck’s heart as Mrs. Bucknell had talked to us calmly of her sister’s murderer, and remembered why I hadn’t wanted to do this movie.

Mrs. Bucknell was drinking a Tom Collins, looking profoundly bored by the humble praise that Bruce and the other exec were giving her.

Yeah, who you really are, the man said, preventing me from finding out if Mrs. Bucknell would tell these two execs to fuck off, giving them a story that they’d tell back in the office repeatedly.

I’m Blanche Potter, and I make documentaries. That’s me. You want to do some spiritual probing? I’m not into astrology, I don’t have a church, and I’m not successful enough to be a Buddhist or a Scientologist yet. I was daring him to say it, to tell me I was right and that Jaya was wrong.

You were lying to me by word three of that sentence. How am I going to believe the rest? He held out his hand, and for a second I thought he wanted me to take it. Instead, I gave his phone back.

And word three was? Sorry, my short-term memory is pretty bourboned tonight.

Potter.

I could tell he enjoyed watching my face change, but not until later. Moments like that, I’m still there, reacting, but also backing off, seeing it, logging the details for later.

He watched me recoil and then, before losing me, came in again. I know your real name, and I know you’re from Stilford, and I know who your dad is. So that means I know more about the real you than anyone else in this room except for your intrepid Indo-American pal, right?

Fuck you, I said.

He laughed, but not for me—for the people near enough to have heard me curse at him. He was spinning my fuck like it was the deadpan punch line to some anecdote. I wasn’t happy, definitely not, but I was satisfied. This was it. I was right. Jaya was wrong. Chuck Varner was here, and he would never leave. I thought about that sheathed knife again, how it used to feel nestled into my belt, just where Chuck Varner holstered his Beretta. I found my thumb grazing the spot, just at my right hip.

You are just pals, right?

In high school they used to ask if Jaya and I were ‘dykes together.’ Try saying it that way. Has the benefit of frankness and makes it even clearer that the speaker is a moron.

Whoa, sorry. Look, my name’s Emil Chadwick, and I’m not here to pry unnecessarily or step on your life, Blanche. You want to go somewhere else? Get a drink?

With a blackmailer? Sounds fun. As long as I could keep my tone up, could keep any tremble out of my face and any scream from spilling out, I could control this man. I had to believe that. I could control myself, and I could control this situation. I looked back at Jaya, who had moved away from Mrs. Bucknell and the execs, and was taking a second of peace, her jaw relaxed and eyes closing in a slow blink that showed how tired she was, how hard she’d been working.

I’m not going to blackmail you. If you come with me and hear me out, that is. If you don’t, then there will be some information in circulation— Emil made a swirling motion, taking in everyone in the lobby, all these people who were essential to my work and life —that you will not want in circulation. I’m giving you an opportunity, Blanche Varner. A grasp on your own future. So, yes, I’m blackmailing you to sit down with me and listen to what I have to say, I suppose. That’s it.

I held up a hand to him, then turned and went over to Jaya to tell her I’d text her as soon as I got to wherever I was going with this guy, and would continue to text her every ten minutes to tell her I was safe for the next hour. Nothing to worry about, I told her, and she grinned at me, happy I might be deciding to get laid.

This is a perfect time for some casual whatever. You did such a good job onscreen that you could only mess things up by hanging around here and talking to the moneymen, anyway.

I’m just going to talk to him, no casual anything, I said, waving and walking backward a couple of steps to alert Chadwick that I was on my way. I kept the quaver out of my voice. I hated hearing the name Emil Chadwick had said to me, in this beautiful lobby, in this cinema where we’d just screened a piece of my work that I was starting to realize was the best thing I’d ever made. I didn’t ever want to hear that name again, be called that name again, anywhere, but especially not here. I wanted him out, and that meant I was leaving, too.

Wait, Jaya said as Chadwick and I reached the doors of the Carver. We turned and she took a picture of us, Chadwick seeing what she was doing in time to smile. Jaya walked closer to us and took a close-up of him.

I could get my agent to send a headshot, he said.

I’m just making sure that you know that I know what you look like, and that the cops will, too, if I don’t get answers back to my texts to Blanche tonight, mm-hmm?

Jaya, it’s fine, I said, holding the door open. The humidity sucked at the AC around me.

Fine by me, Chadwick said. Caution’s smart. Everyone likes smart.

I wasn’t looking for your approval, Jaya said. She pointed at the snapshot on her phone,

Reviews for Your Life Is Mine

[twink_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nathan Ripley's debut novel Find You in the Dark was deliciously dark and creepy. His second novel, Your Life is Mine, is just as dark.Blanche Potter ran from her past and never returned - until the murder of her mother Crissy. She finally returns to her home - to the town where her father, Chuck Varner, went on a killing spree in a crowded mall. He saw himself as a leader - the head of a self created cult. Blanche grew up listening the doctrine her mother and father espoused. And it looks like Crissy continued the 'teachings' after Chuck's death, keeping Chuck's legacy alive.Blanche's arrival is immediately met by a police officer who seems intent on not investigating Crissy's death. I was a little surprised that Blanche didn't push harder here. A journalist named Emil who knows who knows Blanche really is, is also there - intent on using Blanche's life to write an exposé.Your Life is Mine is driven by Blanche, but Emil is also given a voice. He too has more than a few issues with his parent.Blanche ran, but you can't escape that kind of upbringing. She is mentally scarred, scars she has kept hidden from her best friend Jaya. Ripley does a good job of imagining how a survivor of such an upbringing might turn out. How her outlook on life might be, what paths in life she might choose, what relationships might look like after such trauma. The relationship between Blanche and Jaya goes into much detail. Despite her past, I did find it hard to connect with Blanche. I found myself drawn more to Jaya.Just as disturbing are the 'lessons' and 'wisdom' that Chuck preached. But they are topped by those willing to buy into his vision. This is unfortunately not far-fetched at all.Ripley gives us some twists along the way to the final conclusion. There are some clues along the way, so they weren't completely unexpected. The build up to an inevitable, final confrontation keeps building and takes most of the book. I did find the resolution happened much quicker than I expected and the speed of those final chapters left me slightly underwhelmed with the conclusion.Ripley's writing is very readable. I liked the first book better, but will absolutely read what he writes next.